Was the temple curtain torn before or after Jesus died?

Luke does not say that the curtain tore before Jesus died; he simply mentions it first. In Luke 23:44–45 he groups together the two signs from heaven, the darkness over the land and the tearing of the veil, and then in verse 46 he turns to Jesus’ own last words and death. His sentences are joined by a plain ‘and’, which links events without fixing their order. Ancient writers, like modern ones, often grouped material by subject, and Luke’s promise to write “in order” (Luke 1:3) need not mean strict time order in every detail.

Matthew and Mark are more precise about the timing. Mark puts the tearing straight after Jesus’ last breath (Mark 15:37–38), and Matthew joins it to the moment of death and to the earthquake that followed (Matthew 27:50–51). So the curtain was torn at, or immediately after, Jesus’ death, around the ninth hour, when, as Gill notes, the priests were offering the evening incense. Luke’s account does not contradict this, because it does not say otherwise.

At the same moment

Some point out that the veil may have torn at the very moment Jesus cried out and died. When two things happen together, a writer must mention one of them first, and Luke chose to keep the two signs together.